


The Reluctant Bat

by completelyhopeless



Category: DCU
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Comment Fic, Community: comment_fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-05 10:49:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3117377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/completelyhopeless/pseuds/completelyhopeless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Bruce dies saving Jason, Dick tries to pick up the pieces for himself, for Jason, and for Alfred.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Reluctant Bat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [likewinning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/likewinning/gifts).



> For the prompt: _[DCU, Dick Grayson +/ Jason Todd +/ any other Batfam, Bruce Wayne dies saving Jason from the Joker. Dick comes back to Gotham to take on the mantle of the bat.](http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/586914.html?thread=81593506#t81593506)_
> 
> I swore I wasn't touching this. I don't know enough of the comics, not those ones, and I didn't think I could do it right, but I was trying to get myself to do a part of the Dick/Babs AU, and this nagged at me instead. So, I muttered a bunch of incoherent curses and I wrote.

* * *

“He's sleeping, Master Richard.”

Dick nodded, leaning against the door frame and watching for a moment as the kid struggled to breathe through his injuries, trying not to ask the obvious question. _Was it worth it, Bruce?_ Of course it was. Dick shouldn't even _think_ that, but Bruce was his father. Jason is... something else.

“How long?”

“He should make a full recovery and be up and about in a few weeks, perhaps less. He is quite stubborn. It seems to be a family trait.”

“Yeah,” Dick whispered, choking on the word.

“If I may,” Alfred began, forcing Dick to look over at him when he paused. “What will you do now?”

Would he stay? Would he continue Bruce's work? Would he take over Wayne Industries? Would he kick Jason out? Too many questions, and Dick couldn't answer any of them. “I don't know.”

“Very good, sir.”

* * *

They bury Bruce in the rain, and all Dick could think was that it was fitting. Bruce would have approved because him being buried in nice weather would have been wrong.

Jason spent the entire funeral glaring at Dick from across the grave, and Alfred's hand was on the younger boy's shoulder and it hit Dick then that he was the adult he'd been in such a hurry to become—and he hated it.

* * *

Having the money, the company, and the properties, all of that was almost easier than the one part of Bruce's legacy Dick had unwittingly inherited. Of all the things that Dick knew were somehow someday maybe his in a far distant future he barely thought about, it was the most obvious that he'd blocked out of his head.

  
Batman.

He'd had to take up the cowl, and that he hadn't wanted, but he understood the necessity of it, unlike Jason, who flew into a rage and tried to kill him the first time he saw Dick in the suit.

“You don't deserve that. You shouldn't even _be_ here. You should have buried that thing with him because _he_ was Batman. He was an idiot. He should never have gone in there, should never have died. This is all his fault, but you don't belong here.”

Dick knew that was mostly grief talking, and he ignored it. “Gotham needs Batman, and people can't know that Bruce was Batman, even if he's gone. Batman can die later, apart from Bruce, but not now. Not with him.”

“Not with you, dickhead. You're not him,” Jason said angrily. “You will _never_ be him.”

“It's probably better that I'm not,” Dick told him honestly. He would never be Bruce, and he wouldn't take Bruce's place, not in Alfred's heart or in Jason's life or even as Batman. Batman didn't do tricks, didn't fight like he did, didn't smile, didn't make jokes while taunting the bad guys. All of that was Dick, and Dick was not Batman.

* * *

“How long you gonna keep doing this?”

Dick shrugged. He didn't mind the excuse to avoid putting on the rest of the suit because it still wasn't him. He went out as Nightwing after being Batman for a while, carrying both roles. One was easy. The other weighed him down in ways he couldn't begin to think about. “I don't know, Jason. I don't have all of the answers. I don't have _half_ of them.”

“You don't have _any_ of them, dumbass,” Jason muttered, shaking his head. “You shouldn't be him.”

“I'm not.”

“He shouldn't have died.”

“No, he shouldn't have, but he wouldn't have wanted _you_ to be the one that died, either.”

“It _should_ have been me,” Jason insisted, and when he attacked, beating on the Kevlar of the suit, fists pounding in the way only a grieving kid could, in a way Dick knew he'd done himself, one without a real intent to hurt, just a need to rage against what was gone and what would never be.

“No. It shouldn't have,” Dick said. Of all the things he knew, that was the one he knew clearest. Somehow it would have been worse if it was Jason, and he couldn't say why, but it was true.

Jason stopped hitting him. “I hate you.”

“I suppose hugging you now is a bad idea.”

“Don't hug. You're dressed as Batman. That's just wrong.”

So Dick did it, and Jason hit him again, but Alfred smiled when he saw them, the first one he'd had since Bruce died. They're healing. It's slow and messed up, but it's happening.

* * *

“Are you coming?”

Jason looked up, frowning. “You get hit in the head or something, Dickiebird?”

“No,” Dick answered, smiling because he knew how much Jason hated it when he did it under the cowl. The kid glared at him, but the smile didn't stop.

“You're an idiot.”

“Maybe. But Batman needs a Robin, and last time I checked, that was you.”

And that time, it was _Jason_ who smiled.


End file.
